Unfortuantely for thousands of Toronto bike riders, they cannot say the same. Fellow blogTO contributor Roger has had a series of great posts on the recent bike ring crackdown, and tonight I added my part with the news of the latest bike seizures.

Stealing bikes is just plain mean.

1) I have a bike lane for roughly 70% of the ride, and cars respect that lane much more than I thought. Usually, drivers stay in their lane and I stay in mine. I still have to be very careful, though, because usually, there are parked cars to my right. Their doors are as dangerous as the cars to my left. Even though I think I’m largely ignored/not noticed (which isn’t good), the vehicles are much better than I figured. Usually.

2) I said usually, people. Crossing into and stopping in the bike lane are bad ideas. Very bad. And the drivers going through in the “car lane” don’t like when I have to cut into their lane to go around the jerks in the bike lane. But they’re usually understanding… although sometimes they honk… I just tell myself they’re honking at the person stopped where they shouldn’t be stopped.

3) I really dislike the drivers who drive past me only to cut in front of me to make a right turn. But I really loved the van driver today who I could hear behind me, going slower than he normally would be, not racing around me just to cut me off to make a right. If there were an easy way to do so, I would’ve waved a thank you while he turned right. He probably lost 20-30 seconds on his drive. I can see why the other cars feel it’s so important to go around me… NOT.

4) My route has worked really well. None of the intersections are a big problem, although some are a nuissance (like the Damen/Fullerton/Elston “intersection” [you can zoom in more, but you lose the street names]). There are a couple pretty good inclines, but they’re manageable. And Milwaukee is a bit rough, but also manageable.

5) Speaking of good route, it took 40-45 minutes door to door today. I park my bike about a block from work (safer spot), and it definitely took 40 minutes from the time I walked out the door at home to the time I was walking down to work.

6) I am now consistently in a “harder to pedal” gear. I don’t know for sure if this means higher or lower gear. I’ve read how that all works and I don’t remember much, except that when I’m geared with a bigger chain wheel on the front and a smaller chain wheel on the back I can go faster. Anyhow, this means two things: 1) I have a bit more leg strength already, and 2) it helps make the ride as fast as the El. Maybe 30 minutes is a realistic goal – which would be slightly slower than driving but definitely faster than the El.

7) Even though I’m using the same route, it’s never boring. The sights and sounds vary each day. And the benefit of the same route is that I’m really learning those roads, and I know when/where I have to avoid certain things.

8) There’s a park just north of Comiskey that had a bunch old Asian guys doing their version of yoga. Maybe Tai-Chi? I don’t know, but it was slow moving and making poses. And one guy was all Mr. Miyagi, but with an Asian girl instead of a white boy. Cool though to see the playground turned into morning exercise for the Asian population.

9) I do sweat while riding, but the moisture-wicking apparel seems to help and I don’t sweat as much as I thought I would. I put on scrubs at work; nobody can tell I rode 10 miles to get to work (at least not by smell!). By the time I get home, though, I’m ready for a shower.

10) I always bring a water bottle, but I never seem to take a drink until I reach work or home. But from when I park my bike in the morning to the time I reach my desk, I’ve usually finished the bottle and fill it up again – and finish that soon after. That’s gotta be good for me too. Although I expect this to change when it gets hotter out (same with #9, for that matter!).

11) Last, but certainly not least, what I learned on Wednesday. Riding in hail isn’t as bad as you might think. But I don’t recommend it, either.

That’s all I got, except for two more quick notes. I’m hoping I can make this a regular (and shorter) “feature” of the blog, giving updates and notes about my rides. If anybody has a suggestion for what to title them, let me know.

And last, according to the website (I didn’t count), this is Post #100! Woo hoo! rIAm and I made it through our first 100 posts, and hopefully the next 100 won’t take so long to write. Thanks for reading!

I was nowhere near as wiped out when I got to work, and was feeling pretty good too. By the end of the day I could tell I was a bit tired from the morning ride as I “felt the burn” sooner than I do on fresh legs, but when I got home I was still functional, albeit a bit exhausted. The nice thing about the streets is that I get to stop now and then, which perhaps slows me down but also gives me a chance to catch my breath. My legs thank me. There are still lengthy stretches where I don’t stop, and I get a good workout. (In contrast to Amsterdam, where riding a bike feels almost lazy)

Once home, the exhaustion I felt was a happy one. I had pushed through and rode well the whole way. I do look forward to building more leg strength though; I’m a slower rider than I’d like.

After getting home I attended to the yard, which is rather a chore with the crappy equipment available to me. The landlord really should do this, but he won’t be showing up anytime soon and it’s just easier to do it myself. Actually, it’s easier to not take care of it, which is the usual state of affairs, but we’ve got our big party this weekend, and knee-high grass isn’t on the menu.

And after a break for some super delicious tomato salad and bread, I vacuumed… pretty much everything. All the floors in our apartment as well as the entry and stairwell. And I helped with some laundry. At which point I was ready for a shower. And after that… well, I was totally spent. But I haven’t felt that good while so exhausted in a very long time. It makes me want to ride my bike everyday, although realistically it will be less than that.

And for the worriers out there, I’m sufficiently assertive while riding to get where I need to go fairly efficiently, and be noticed and respected by drivers (or at least as much as possible), but not so aggressive as to do things that risk my status of “no broken bones.” Really.

OK, so if you’ve known me at all from about 4th grade up until a week ago, you know me as somebody who wears glasses. It’s all I’ve ever known. Never really cared about contacts. I wore my glasses during athletics, couldn’t see much when I went swimming and got used to cleaning my lenses on my shirt.

But I finally decided to give contacts a try. I’ve heard that vision is great with contacts, especially being able to see the periphery and not having the frames in the way. It also helped that rIAm got contacts and I saw her process. So anyway, bottom line, contacts are AWESOME!

I have never, ever, been able to see this well. At least not since 4th grade. This is like actual 20-20 vision. My eyes were corrected to 20-20, but c’mon, it wasn’t really 20-20, since I had to move my whole head to look at something in my peripheral vision. Heck, even to glance at something on my desk if I was looking at my computer screen meant moving my whole head. Now? All in focus, all the time.

It’s a freedom and improved vision I only considered in a theoretical way. But now it’s real. And I can wear sunglasses! I swear, these words and the screen are bigger now than they were with glasses. In fact, the only thing I don’t like about contacts is that I have to take them out at the end of the day. And the 12 hour max sometimes is just too short.

Another benefit… no glasses necessary while riding my bike! In fact, drumroll please, I can wear sunglasses while riding my bike! I can even get those wrap-around kind that block the air (or at least a lot of it) from my eyes, keeping my eyes from drying out while riding. Su-weet!

Last summer I rode my bike a lot, but it’s been in the garage all winter. I rode over to a Mexican market to get some goodies recently, but otherwise, it’s been idle. With all the stuff going on in my life right now, taking a couple hour break to go riding hasn’t been practical. So I kept threatening to ride my bike to work (after all, I have to get there somehow).

And so, yesterday, I made good on that threat, with fancy-shmancy $10 wrap-around sunglasses. I could see so well, the sun and wind nicely blocked, the lake sparkling on my left, beautiful city to the right – it was awesome. Well, from the waist up. Because from the waist down, my body hated me.

Not having riden to work before, and with rIAm’s trademark “don’t get dead” line in my head (which extends to injury pre-wedding), I took the safe route, the Lakefront Trail. This is an absolutely awesome stretch of bike path, right along Lake Michigan. But going this route added roughly 5 miles (that’s 8k for you metric-philes out there) to my commute. And the simultaneous best and worst thing about the trail: you don’t stop.

I have no doubt that my legs are totally out of shape for a 15 mile ride. And I probably pushed it too much early on. And my nose ran a little, which affected my breathing, and I should’ve stopped and cleared that out better. But still. I know I can do the ride, I don’t need to make my commute 50% longer than necessary. And it took me an hour and twenty minutes. Even a bad day on the El is faster than that.

I decided it was back to the streets for the ride home. A former colleague of mine used to live two blocks south me and his route was south on Damen to Clybourn, and then Halsted south to 35th, and then east to State. Which makes sense — it’s certainly better than Damen all the way south. But Clybourn is a busy street and with parked cars, it’s a tight fit for a bike. And drivers don’t pay much attention to bicyclists. But the other nuissance is that Halsted has 3 bridges with open metal grates. Not impassable, but still not my preference.

Not thinking of a better route, or noticing one on the Chicago Bike Map, I decided to take 33rd over to Halsted, and then turn left either at Clybourn or a straight street further north. It was clear immediately that I was making much more rapid progress than I did in the morning, even though my legs started tired. And I was still not looking forward to the open metal grates and North/Clybourn area.

But, as I was crossing over the Kennedy, I realized “I can turn on Milwaukee!” The somewhat crazy Halsted/Grand/Milwaukee intersection was coming up, and I remembered that Milwaukee has some bike lane (as does Halsted, which is why it’s a good north-south route), but also isn’t as congested as the other diagonals. I also knew I’d have a bike lane when I reached Damen, and no metal grates. It took a bit of manuevering to make the left onto Milwaukee, but I felt home free. And really, I was; it was a great route. I just had to manuever the reprehensible Damen/Fullerton/Elston just-barely-doesn’t-meet-as-one intersection.

My legs were shot, but it took about an hour to get home. If I can do this with some regularity, my legs will build up strength and endurance. I estimated the route home to be 10 miles, and at roughly an hour, that’s 10 m.p.h. I don’t know for sure, but it seems like it wouldn’t be too hard to get that to 12-15 m.p.h., and then the ride is 40-50 minutes — or, roughly the same as the El.

And that means I could bike 20 miles a day without interfering with anything I have to do. And rIAm says I look super cool with my sunglasses, so I’ve got that going for me too.